Vendetta: a story of one forgotten eBook

He hesitated and then abruptly left me, to return
in the space of two or three minutes with a thick
rug of sheepskin. He insisted so earnestly on
my accepting this covering as a protection from the
night air, that, to please him, I yielded to his entreaties
and lay down, wrapped in its warm folds. The
good-natured fellow then wished me a “Buon riposo,
signor!” and descended to his own resting-place,
humming a gay tune as he went. From my recumbent
posture on the deck I stared upward at the myraid
stars that twinkled softly in the warm violet skies—­stared
long and fixedly till it seemed to me that our ship
had also become a star, and was sailing through space
with its gliftering companions. What inhabitants
peopled those fair planets, I wondered? Mere
men and women who lived and loved and lied to one
another as bravely as we do? or superior beings to
whom the least falsehood is unknown? Was there
one world among them where no women were born?
Vague fancies—­odd theories—­flitted
through my brain, I lived over again the agony of
my imprisonment in the vaults—­again I forced
myself to contemplate the scene I had witnessed between
my wife and her lover—­again I meditated
on every small detail requisite to the fulfillment
of the terrible vengeance I had designed. I have
often wondered how, in countries where divorce is
allowed, a wronged husband can satisfy himself with
so meager a compensation for his injuries as the mere
getting rid of the woman who has deceived him.
It is no punishment to her—­it is what she
wishes. There is not even any very special disgrace
in it according to the present standard of social
observances. Were public whipping the recognized
penalty for the crime of a married woman’s infidelity,
there would be fewer of the like scandals—­the
divorce might follow the scourging. A daintily
brought-up feminine creature would think twice, nay,
fifty times, before she would run the risk of allowing
her delicate body to be lashed by whips wielded by
the merciless hands of a couple of her own sex—­such
a prospect of degradation, pain, shame, and outraged
vanity would be more effectual to kill the brute in
her than all the imposing ceremonials of courts of
law and special juries. Think of it, kings, lords,
and commons! Whipping at the cart’s tail
was once a legal punishment—­if you would
stop the growing immorality and reckless vice of women
you had best revive it again—­only apply
it to rich as well as to poor, for it is most probable
that the gay duchesses and countesses of your lands
will need its sharp services more frequently than the
work-worn wives of your laboring men. Luxury,
idleness, and love of dress are hot-beds for sin—­look
for it, therefore, not so much in the hovels of the
starving and naked as in the rose-tinted, musk-scented
boudoirs of the aristocracy—­look for it,
as your brave physicians would search out the seeds
of a pestilence that threatens to depopulate a great
city, and trample it out if you can and will—­